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1.8.4-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.8.4 Authority reasserts its Rights Fantine is too sick and close to death to understand why Javert is there and not strong enough to face prison even for six months and with Cosette promised to be taken care of. Jean Valjean, who will apparently never have his identity hidden from the readers again, handles it very well. He gently tells her that Javert is not there to arrest her and then tries to get Javert to do this somewhere else. Javert does not handle it well at all. In fact, I’m having difficulty imagining that he could handle this worse. Though I will be fair and say that he did begin by telling Valjean to hurry up and come with him and if Valjean had done that then the whole sorry scene that follows could have been avoided. Fantine is upset because Javert was using the disrespectfully informal ‘you’ and so she thinks that he is talking about her. I’m not going to blame Valjean for not leaving fast enough because it appears to have been approximately ten seconds at this point. Javert is just very impatient after having been looking into this for five years. Here’ the thing about Javert’s part in this. He was not the one who abandoned her on the streets when she was a child or left her to make her own way in the world. He is not the one who seduced and impregnated her and then abandoned her and her illegitimate child. He is not the one who promised to take care of her child but then started abusing the girl within a few weeks and started demanding far more money than anyone in her class could reasonably be expected to pay. He was not the one to seek out the truth of her child via her letters or to actually visit Cosette to prove she existed. He was not the one who fired her. He was not the one whose well-meaning but ultimately misguided morality policies led to the dismissal. He was not the one attacked her on the street that night. Javert had very little to do with Fantine’s fall and others, even Valjean, are more responsible there. In fact, without Javert’s arrest Valjean never would have learned of her and she would have died a prostitute on the street though we cannot really commend him here for that any more than we can commend Bamatabois for his part in bringing her to Valjean’s attention since it was nowhere near either of their intentions. And yet that doesn’t let him off the hook here. He was doing his duty arresting Valjean but he was behaving most irregularly and unprofessionally because of his five-year obsession. There was no reason to tell a dying woman that Madeleine is not the mayor but a convict. If he wants to insist on Valjean calling him Monsieur Inspector then that’s one thing and I can’t fault him for his terribly unsympathetic but perfectly lawful refusal to listen to Valjean’s request in private or to grant him three days. It’s not kind but neither is Javert and it’s pretty typical convict treatment. In fact, he could really be behaving worse to him. I cannot fault Javert, either, for repeating loudly enough for Fantine to hear that Valjean wants to go get Cosette and it would really be madness for him to say yes. Perhaps slightly less mad for him to accompany Valjean but, really, I can’t think of anyone who would grant that request even now. He doesn’t know that Fantine believes Cosette to be there and if he didn’t it wouldn’t be his business to perpetuate that falsehood. What I can blame him for is throwing a tantrum and calling Fantine a hussy, for telling her to shut up when she isn’t currently in trouble with the law. He didn’t have to tell her that Valjean is a convict and that she is being treated like a countess for having a bed to die in. A bed paid for by Valjean and so there is nothing at all improper about her being there and she is hardly robbing anyone of anything they would have had without Valjean. And he’s going to turn her out and maybe even arrest her for the Bamatabois incident after he’s done with this! Really, Javert? Where is the justice in that? But he doesn’t care about Fantine and the fact that his words are killing her. No, it was not him who drove her to the brink of death and it’s been well-established that she was dying that day or the next unless seeing Cosette produced a miracle but his words caused her to die right when she did. It wasn’t his intention to kill her but his words were the immediate cause of her death and when someone shoots someone who was falling off of a building and would have died anyway they are still responsible. I can’t give him a pass for his actions here and the fact he has an obsession with arresting Valjean doesn’t come close to excusing him. Even if she hadn’t died, he still would have been acting abominably. Valjean may be exaggerating a little when he says that Javert has outright murdered her but Javert doesn’t even spare it a thought. He brushes it off because if Valjean resists he’s going to get the thumbscrews. Thumbscrews, incidentally, are a medieval torture device used for crushing thumbs and fingers. Literally crushing them. I doubt Valjean would really have his fingers crushed as that would hurt his labor but it’s a slow process so it can still be used without literally crushing them. In fact, Javert doesn’t even threaten him with that if he resists. It’s if he doesn’t go instantly. Nice. Valjean had passively submitted to Javert’s care until Fantine died then he casually removed himself from his grip, took an iron bar from the wall (and, dilapidated or not, that’s badass), and advised Javert to let him have a moment with the body. Javert obliged. Not because he was being kind but because he was terrified of Valjean right then and trembling and worried Valjean might escape if he tried to summon the guards. So he’s pretty much relying on Valjean coming willingly, I guess. Valjean looked at her with great pity and whispered something in her ear that apparently made the corpse smile so I’m guessing it had something to do with his promise to take care of Cosette and have her want for nothing and a promise that she was still a good person despite everything, maybe also an apology for how Arras had derailed things and how his past had led Javert to her deathbed where he proceeded in giving her a heart attack. Valjean kissed her hand and told Javert that his business was done and his schedule open to be arrested. Commentary Caramarthenfan “It wasn’t his intention to kill her but his words were the immediate cause of her death and when someone shoots someone who was falling off of a building and would have died anyway they are still responsible.” Interesting analogy, thinking about it. Also, irrelevantly to Les Miz I was double-checking the French for the thumbscrews reference (which I think is probably a hyperbolic threat on Javert’s part—one hopes, anyway), and apparently poucette is literally “little thumb” (f., m. poucet), so in addition to “thumbscrew,” Poucette is also used as a translation for Thumbelina. Languages are weird. O_o